CHAPTER 31
Una had been so caught up, first with anger and then passion, that she’d not considered what to do when the ambulance arrived at its destination. But its slowing wheels jogged her senses. Nurses didn’t go out with the ambulance. She doubted Conor would say anything, and the patient certainly wouldn’t know better, but how would she explain the situation to Superintendent Perkins if word did reach her?
They stopped on a garbage-strewn street in front of an old wooden tenement. It took her a moment to get her bearings, but when the air changed directions and the scent of blood and entrails struck her nose, she realized they were in Hell’s Kitchen.
Edwin grimaced. “What’s that smell?”
“The slaughterhouses,” Una said without thinking, then hastily added, “We have them in Augusta too.”
Hell’s Kitchen had never been a regular haunt of Una’s. Its saloons and gambling dens and whorehouses drew dupes from all parts of the city. Easy pickings, if it weren’t for the gangs of Irish roughs who patrolled the streets, expecting a cut of everything. Between them and Marm Blei, Una would walk away with fewer coins in her pocket than she’d started with, so she generally kept away. Rule number twenty-one: Don’t pay twice.
There was a rap on the front panel, and Conor hollered, “We’re here, Doc! I’ll be with the horse and wagon if you need anything.”
Edwin grabbed his medical bag. “Guess we’ll just have to get used to the smell.” He removed the wagon’s tailboard and jumped down, then held out his hand for Una.
She hesitated.
“You’re coming, aren’t you?”
Una took his hand and climbed from the wagon. She’d be more conspicuous waiting in the ambulance, with every passerby stopping and peering inside in the hopes of spying some battered or bloodied passenger to satisfy their morbid curiosity. Already a small crowd had gathered.
Edwin pushed through the onlookers toward the tenement steps. Una followed close behind. She didn’t see the roundsman waiting there for them until it was too late to turn around.
“What’s the situation, Officer?” Edwin asked.
“Third floor. Number three-oh-two. A man slipped on the stairs comin’ down from the roof. Twisted his leg mighty badly.” The roundsman spoke with a thick brogue that, unlike Conor, he made no attempt to conceal. His skin was pasty and his dark mustache overgrown. The brass insignia on his jacket read PRECINCT TWENTY.
The tightness in Una’s chest eased enough that she could breathe. She didn’t know the copper, and his was one of the few precincts this side of Fifty-Seventh Street she hadn’t toured in handcuffs. Even so, she stayed in Edwin’s shadow, dropping her chin just enough to obscure her face without seeming shifty.
“Is the leg broken?” Edwin asked.
“Don’t know. Didn’t take much of a look myself.”
“Never mind. Just show us the way.”
“You and . . . er . . . the lady?”
“Yes. Nurse Kelly will be assisting me.”
The copper shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and the tightness in Una’s chest returned. Did he recognize her? Should she run?
Una forced down a steadying breath and lifted her eyes to meet his. To run now would be disastrous. She didn’t know this part of the city well and would likely be caught. Even if she weren’t, the ruse would be up, and she’d never be able to return to the training school. No, all she could do now was trust her disguise.
His gaze shifted from her to Edwin. “It’s just that . . . these slums, Doctor, they’re not a pretty sight. They don’t live like you and me. It might be too much for the lady.”
Una nearly laughed with relief. He hadn’t recognized her at all, only thought her too delicate to proceed. “Whatever the conditions, Officer,” she said, “you may rest assured I’m well trained and up for the task.”
“Suit yourself, miss,” he said and led them into the building.
As soon as the door closed, darkness enveloped them. The roundsman unfastened the lantern from his belt and lit it with a match.
“Are there no lamps in these tenements?” Edwin asked.
“Not these older ones, no,” the officer said.
“But how do the residents manage? Surely they don’t carry a lantern strapped to their belts like you do.”
The roundsman chuckled. “No, sir, they don’t. Get by with a match or a candle, I expect.”
“No wonder the man fell,” Edwin muttered, his voice thick with disapproval.
He’d probably never been inside a tenement before, Una realized. A barbed reminder that no matter his affections, they came from entirely different worlds.
The roundsman tossed the smoldering match he’d used to light his lantern onto the floor and started up the stairs. “Mind your step, now.”
Una ground the match head to a fine dust with her boot heel before following behind him and Edwin. An old tenement like this likely hadn’t any fire escapes either. Una did her best to ignore this fact, despite the uptick of her pulse.
The narrow stairs creaked as they ascended. Vegetable peels, rat droppings, and bits of broken glass littered the ground. The smell of the slaughterhouses mingled with that of rot and urine. Halfway up the second flight, Edwin stopped and lifted his foot. A sticky, goopy mess clung to the bottom of his expensive patent leather shoes. To his credit, Edwin merely scraped it off on the lip of the step and continued.
A muffled wailing greeted them when they reached the third floor. The roundsman rapped once on the door before opening it. They entered a disheveled room perhaps twelve feet square. A rusted kettle rattled atop the stove. Wooden crates and barrels served as the only furniture. Two windows looked onto the rear yard, affording the room at least a semblance of light.
Though Una had lived in worse places, her weeks at the nurses’ home with its clean and cozy appointments had weakened her sensibilities. She heard Edwin’s sharp intake of breath and struggled to hide her own revulsion. Mrs. Buchanan’s enthusiasm for order and tidiness, once so annoying to Una, now seemed positively saintly.
Three children huddled wide-eyed in the far corner of the room. An old, toothless woman rested on an upturned crate nearby. Two more middle-aged women sat near the windows hunched over their needlework, their fingers knobby and thin, baskets of shirts stacked around them. One of them pointed to the adjoining room where the moaning was emanating from.
Stepping around rag piles and ash buckets and rusty pails, they picked their way toward the room. The injured man lay inside on a thin mattress, his wife weeping beside him. A single candle lit the windowless room. But even in the dim light, Una could see the grave state of the man’s leg, twisted below the knee and bleeding through his dirty trousers.
The copper hesitated by the doorway, but Edwin grabbed his lantern and hurried in. Una followed. He set down his bag and shrugged out of his jacket, laying it aside without care of dirt and fleas. As he rolled up his shirtsleeves, he said to Una, “Open my bag and find the scissors so I can cut away his trouser leg.”
For a single moment, Una stood gaping down at the man, his wife, and Edwin unable to move. It wasn’t the man’s leg. She’d seen worse at Bellevue and before. But the situation called for a nurse. Not a thief on the lam pretending to be a nurse.
She rattled her head and knelt beside Edwin. Nurse or not, at least she could help. She fumbled with the medicine bag’s latch, trying three times before it opened. When she managed to find the scissors, the cold metal felt familiar in her hand. She handed them to Edwin and watched as he cut through the man’s trousers. The leg, swollen to twice its natural size, had taken on a waxy, reddish-purple hue. The tibia had fractured and pierced the skin. Blood spread from the wound.
The wife gasped at the sight and continued to sob. The man told her in Gaelic to hush, then turned to Edwin and said in English, “Pull out your saw, Doc, I’m ready.”
“I don’t think we’ll need to amputate. Certainly not here. Once I get the leg stabilized, we’ll bring you to Bellevue for further care.”
Edwin turned his scissors to the man’s boot, but the man sat up and cried, “Not me boot, Doc! It’s me only pair.”
“Your foot’s too swollen to remove the boot otherwise, and we must get it off.”
“What about trying a little grease?” Una said. She knew all too well how prized a good pair of boots were.
“I suppose that might work.”
Una stood. “I’ll fetch it along with some clean water.” She turned to the wife. “Perhaps you could help me.”
The woman nodded, wobbling as she stood. Una looped an arm around her waist and steered her to the main room. Una’s Gaelic was rusty, but she remembered a little of what her mother used to say when tending to the sick and needy. “Ná caill do chroí.” Don’t lose heart. “Dr. Westervelt and I will see that he gets the very best care.”
A little grease and the boot came off with a single tug. The man didn’t even flinch. Una suspected that had as much to do with the laudanum Edwin gave him as with her gentle ministrations, though. It took only a few minutes in the frigid apartment for the water she’d boiled to cool. Once it reached a tepid temperature, she cleaned the blood from the man’s leg. Though only the tibia had broken through the skin, she knew from her nightly study with Dru that the fibula was likely fractured too. She helped Edwin splint the man’s leg, ready with oakum packing and cotton bindings before he asked for them.
The roundsman fetched the stretcher from the ambulance, and Una accompanied him to grab a blanket. “You’re mighty good with these folks,” he said to her as they trudged back up the dark stairs. Una was alert for any hint of sarcasm or suspicion, but his voice was sincere. “I’d heard yous at Bellevue were a new breed of nurses. Now I believe it.”
Una found it strangely difficult to speak, as if a lump of coal were blocking her windpipe. At last she managed, “Thank you, Officer.”
Back in the small, dark bedroom, they carefully rolled the man onto the long swath of stretcher canvas, then slipped wooden poles through the tubes of fabric along either edge. Una tucked the blankets around him until he was snug as a swaddled babe. He winced when Edwin and the officer lifted the stretcher, but the laudanum kept him otherwise calm.
Una grabbed the medical bag and followed behind the men as they carried the stretcher from the room. She didn’t envy them the task of picking their way down the steep steps and held the roundsman’s lantern aloft to light the way.
They had packed the man into the back of the ambulance and were about to leave when the wife hurried out from the tenement. She came up to the side of the wagon where Una was seated and held something out to her. “Go raibh míle maith agat.”
May you have a thousand good things. Una only vaguely remembered the expression but knew it meant a heartfelt thanks.
She took the object—a small, oval medallion—and turned it over in her palm. One side was flat. The other had a relief of the Virgin Mary.
“I’ll see that it stays with him,” she said.
The woman shook her head. “No, my friend, it’s for you.”
The ambulance pulled away before Una could insist on giving it back. It was nickel silver, not the real thing. No fence in town would give her more than a quarter for it. But somehow that didn’t matter. She squeezed her fingers around the medallion, then tucked it safely away inside her pocket.